


(in love) i've always been a mercenary

by shineyma



Series: a new chance at you [3]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Hydra Grant Ward, Hydra Jemma Simmons, Season/Series 01, Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-21
Updated: 2015-10-21
Packaged: 2018-04-27 09:36:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5043232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shineyma/pseuds/shineyma
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The trip to Puerto Rico doesn't quite go as Grant expects.</p>
            </blockquote>





	(in love) i've always been a mercenary

**Author's Note:**

> I actually finished an AOS fic! A real, non-drabble fic! Yay! (Sorry, guys. My biospecialist muse and I have been on shaky ground for a while. Hopefully we've weathered the worst of it, but who can say?)
> 
> Just a note: this series is NOT season 3-compliant. I started it just after the season two finale, and none of my plans for it changed with the recent revelations (or lack thereof) about the rock.
> 
> Title is from Panic! at the Disco's _Mercenary_. Thanks for reading and, as always, please be gentle if you review!

It takes three hours for Grant to reach the end of his patience with the way the captain of the boat they hired keeps _looking_ at Jemma.

On the bright side, the gunshot actually gets her attention.

“You killed him,” she observes, frowning down at the captain’s (and seriously, the guy called himself the _captain_ of this tiny little speedboat. What a douche) corpse. The blood pooling out from beneath him has already reached her shoes, but if she cares, she doesn’t show it.

“Got you to look at me,” he says, leaning back against the railing. “Am I gonna have to kill someone every time I want your attention now?”

She tilts her head, still frowning. “That sounds impractical.”

“It is,” he admits. Hell of a way to stay low-key, leaving a trail of bodies everywhere they go, but he’s willing to risk it if he has to. “But you’ve been ignoring me.”

To be fair, she’s been ignoring _everyone_ —and everything. The captain only got a response from her because she needed to give him the occasional direction to wherever the fuck they’re going; his attempts at casual conversation failed miserably, which is the only reason Grant held out for three whole hours.

But that’s not the point. The point is that the only thing keeping her attention is the box, and he doesn’t like being ignored in favor of _anything_ , especially not some weird liquefied rock.

(A weird liquefied rock he’s like eighty-five percent sure is _talking_ to her, but he’s trying not to think about that.)

“I have,” she says, but even as her eyes remain locked on his, her fingers continue to trail lovingly over the lid of the box. “I’m sorry. We’re almost there.” Her eyes flit down to the captain’s body. “Assuming you know how to drive one of these things.”

He does, of course; he might be impulsively violent, but he’s not dumb enough to strand them in the middle of the ocean by killing the only person who knows how to work their boat.

“You’re different, now,” he says, instead of telling her so. The old Jemma—the one he knew on the Bus—could never have taken his casual murder of a man she was just talking to so lightly.

The smile she gives him is politely puzzled. “So are you.”

“Fair enough.” It’s a decent point. “So, where are we going?”

He’s still got questions, but he’s pretty sure he’s not gonna get any answers while she’s holding that box. Might as well get this (whatever _this_ is) over with.

Then he can work on figuring her out.

 

 

Their destination turns out to be a tiny jut of rock at the bottom of a very high cliff. At Jemma’s insistence, Grant pulls the boat up alongside the rock—and is then immediately forced to grab her to keep her from climbing up onto it.

“What are you doing?” she asks, frowning in what looks to be genuine confusion.

“Are you kidding me?” he asks. He tightens his grip on her arms as she tries to pull away from him, and earns a chiding frown for his efforts—like _he’s_ the one being ridiculous. “What are _you_ doing?”

“I’m _trying_ to get out of the boat,” she says, slowly.

“Yeah, I can see that.” He heroically resists the urge to shake her—or take that damned box she’s cradling like it’s a child and throw it overboard. “But _why_?”

“Because we’re here,” she says. “Obviously.”

Grant takes another look, and—nope. Tiny rock, sheer cliff face.

“There’s _nothing_ here,” he says.

“Yes there is,” she disagrees. “You just can’t see it. Now, let me go.”

He does, after a minute, because there’s a weirdly ominous sloshing sound coming from the box, and he’s a little worried the rock is gonna un-liquefy itself and crush them both.

“Fine,” he says. “But I’m going first.”

At the very least, he needs to be in a position to catch her if she tumbles off the rock. So, ignoring her protests, he moors the boat to another (very conveniently placed) rock, and then climbs onto the rock they’re apparently there for.

He’s still very skeptical of this whole exercise, and remains so right up to the moment that Jemma steps up to the cliff face, presses her hand into it, and _opens a fucking door_.

“Seriously?” he asks. “There’s a hidden door in a random cliff in San Juan?”

She ignores him—of course she fucking does—in favor of just walking right through the door, and he swears as he follows.

…Only to completely forget what he’s saying as soon as his eyes adjust to the darkness inside the cliff, because they’re at the top of a staircase that leads down into what looks like a _whole fucking city_.

A city. A city _beneath_ San Juan.

“What the fuck.” He’s pretty sure he’s gaping, but—seriously. _What the fuck_. “How did you even know this was here?”

Jemma’s smile is the small, dreamy thing that tells him she’s once again lost somewhere in her own head. “It’s home.”

“Right,” he says, and wonders, not for the first time, just how she managed to hide her _crazy_ so well, all those months on the Bus. “Of course it is.”

She looks down at the box. Her head tilts slightly, like she’s listening to something—or someone—far away, and then she nods.

“This way,” she says, starting down the stairs.

The moment her foot touches the top step, it lights up, and the rest of the stairs follow. The light spreads out from the bottom of the stairs, and soon the whole city-cavern is lit by glowing white lines along the ground and walls. It is, without doubt, one of the creepiest damn things Grant has ever seen, but Jemma doesn’t even seem to notice.

“It’s not far,” she adds, over her shoulder, when he doesn't immediately follow.

He guesses he should at least be happy she’s still talking to him—she barely said three words on the flight from HYDRA—but he’s way too on edge. It’s still a toss-up whether Jemma is psychic or crazy (although finding a hidden city swings the balance in the psychic direction), but either way he’s got a bad feeling about this adventure.

“What is this place?” he asks. He keeps a wary eye out for potential threats as he follows her, even though the place looks abandoned.

“Home,” she says, vaguely, as they reach the bottom of the stairs.

“Yeah, you mentioned,” he says. “But whose home? Who built it?”

“The Kree,” she says, sounding weirdly sad.

“The who?”

“The Kree,” she repeats. She leaves off stroking the box to touch a wall fondly, then starts off down the—street? He feels weird calling anything under what has to be hundreds of feet of rock a _street_ , but there’s really no other word for it. “An alien race who visited the Earth long ago. They’re gone now, but their legacy remains.”

Is she talking about herself? He really hopes she’s not talking about herself. “And what legacy would that be?”

Instead of answering, she takes a sharp left, into one of the buildings lining the street.

“Goddamnit,” he mutters, and follows.

The inside of the building looks like nothing so much as a throne room; it’s rectangular, long and narrow, with a dais at the far end and two glowing lines down the middle like a red carpet. He manages to catch Jemma's elbow before she can really enter the room, which is a relief; he can’t see what’s _on_ the dais, but the light is definitely brighter there, and he’s not feeling great about the idea of going towards it.

“It’s all right, Grant,” Jemma says, patting his hand on her arm absently. “This is as far as we go.” She kneels right there in the doorway and sets the box gently on the floor. “It’s up to _you_ , now.”

She’s not talking to him. She’s talking to the liquefied rock, and she punctuates her words by lifting the lid off the box and tipping it onto its side.

The liquefied rock is…well, liquid. And yet, the only word he can think of to describe its movement towards the dais is _lunging_. It races across the room and up the stairs, and the light on the dais brightens to the point that Grant is forced to look away or be blinded. His eyes fall on Jemma; she’s still kneeling, eyes closed, face relaxed but somehow ecstatic.

Like so many things today, it’s fucking creepy.

And speaking of creepy…

Someone (something?) is _singing_. It’s not coming from anywhere nearby—it’s just a distant, wordless vocalization—but it’s loud enough to be both haunting and nerve-wracking. Grant’s just about reaching his limit, here; he hauls Jemma to her feet, ready to drag her out of here kicking and screaming if things get any weirder.

“Look,” she breathes, and he follows her gaze to the dais, where the light has dimmed to show the liquefied rock isn’t liquid anymore. It’s back to its original rocky form, and as they watch, it ripples once and then goes still.

The singing stops. Jemma sways.

“It’s done,” she says on a breathless laugh. “It’s actually done. Oh!”

She throws herself at him in a joyous hug, and he keeps one eye on the rock as he returns it.

He’s pretty sure the thing is staring at him.

Fucking. Creepy.

“Finally,” Jemma sighs into his shirt. He looks down at her, wondering…

“Hey,” he says, and is both surprised and gratified when she immediately looks up at him. He cups her jaw and maintains eye contact for a long moment, and—yeah. “You’re looking more…present.”

Her expression’s still a little distant, but it’s more _lost in thought_ than _off with the fucking fairies_. For the first time since—Christ, who knows when? Maybe before the uprising—she actually looks like someone who can be trusted alone for more than five minutes at a time.

“I’m sorry,” she says, honestly sounding it. She’s still got a hint of that dreamy tone, but it’s not too bad. Like the first few days they spent with John, before her crazy really set in. “I’ve been distracted, I know. It’s just—we were so _close_ , after so _long_. It was hard to focus.”

“I’ll let you make it up to me,” he says, brushing her hair out of her face. It earns him a bright smile.

“I’m happy to do so,” she says, and rocks up onto her toes to kiss him.

Sex is _absolutely_ on the menu—even putting aside the fact that he _definitely_ deserves it, after getting dragged all over the planet for the sake of her damn rock, he’s barely even kissed her since they visited the _Iliad_. She was so out of it afterward, it was like she’d forget what they were doing three seconds in; not exactly his idea of a good time.

But while sex _is_ a major part of his plans for her, it’s not happening here, and it’s not what he was talking about. So, once he’s kissed her breathless, he pushes her away—gently.

“Why don’t you start by answering some questions.”

Jemma frowns. “What sort of questions?”

“That legacy you mentioned,” he says, “was it the rock?”

“The monolith,” she corrects, looking to the dais. “And no. I’m afraid the Kree’s legacy was nothing so pleasant.”

Awesome. Because he hasn’t had _enough_ trouble with unpleasant alien legacies. (Still, at least it's not  _her_.)

“What was it, then?” he asks.

“An abomination,” she says, voice heavy. “A plague upon this Earth.”

Great. “What kind of plague? Are we talking biblical?”

“No.” Jemma hugs his arm and rests her head against his shoulder, eyes still on the rock. “Long ago, the Kree attempted to create weapons out of the early humans. Instead, they created”—she shakes her head—“something else. Something unnatural. They need to be destroyed.”

Destruction’s never been a problem for him, but he’s gonna need a little more detail than that.

“Give me specifics,” he says. “What _something else_ did they make?”

“They’re like the Gifteds,” she says, frowning, “in a way. But instead of developing powers in response to external stimuli—such as Mr. Chan and his nuclear plant, or Captain America and the supersoldier serum—their abilities are encoded in their DNA. They’re an entire race of—of _mistakes_.”

…Okay, then. It all sounds a little iffy to him, but hey. If she wants to kill people, who’s he to stop her? And he hasn’t had the chance to kill many powered people. Could be a fun challenge.

“And do you know where to find these _mistakes_?” he asks.

“I know where to find one of them.” She looks up at him, all doe eyes and pretty smile. “How would you feel about killing Daniel Whitehall?”

“Whitehall?” he echoes.

She nods.

Grant thinks of the two meetings they've had with Whitehall—the old man’s hungry gaze on Jemma, the little barbs about John’s death, the endless pontificating—and can’t help but smile.

“Oh,” he says, “I think I can manage that.”


End file.
